Intravenous (IV) additive and injectable unit dose programs are administered in many hospitals as one method for introducing medications into a patient for a prescribed treatment. In prescribing an IV additive or an intramuscular medication unit dose treatment program, a doctor may order any one of a number of drugs or vitamins to be injected intramuscularly or added to the solution in a sterilized IV container and administered intravenously to a patient. The quantity of the drug or vitamin is also prescribed by the doctor to adjust the dosage of medication to the intravenous solution to the needs of each patient. In addition to the method of adding drugs and vitamins to an IV container for an IV additive program, some IV additive programs may be instituted by combining an IV additive solution in a "piggyback" arrangement of containers for certain specialized treatments requiring a combination of drugs.
In a hospital's IV additive program, the prescribed medication is added to an IV bottle or plastic IV bag under sterlized conditions by inserting a needle into the "target area" of a membrane closing the top of an IV solution bottle or a membrane covering the inlet port of a plastic IV bag. The IV solution bottle has a sterile seal covering the membrane area prior to the time of adding medication to the bottle. The IV container must be resealed under sterilized conditions to prevent airborne bacteria, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, from accumulating on the exposed surface of the IV container covering. In addition to maintaining a sterile surface of a container (the sterilization of the container covering), the resealing of the container alerts the hospital staff that the original contents have been altered by the Pharmacy. A hospital's nursing staff is trained not to administer the IV solution unless one of the members of the staff mixed the contents, or there is some means to alert the nursing staff that the contents have not been altered since they were prepared in the Pharmacy department. In the case of the plastic IV bag, the sealing cover protects the "plug" in the inlet port from becoming dislodged during transport, and the cover also alerts the Pharmacy that the contents have not been altered so the container and its contents may be revised.
The prior practice has been to utilize a plastic cap for resealing the IV containers. The plastic cap for the bottle container snaps over the top of the metal rim surrounding the rubber membrane to completely cover and seal the top of the solution bottle. The prior practice also uses a plastic cap or a heat shrink plastic wrap to reseal the plastic IV bag's inlet port. No provision is now made to remove the seal from an IV bag, since a separate outlet is used for administering the drugs to the patient.
In an effort to hold down hospital costs in reducing the allocation for expensive inventory space, the prior practice of most hospitals has attempted to maintain only one size plastic cap in inventory for IV bottles and another one for IV bags. Since the IV solution and piggyback containers are manufactured by different manufacturers, the tops are not of uniform diameter. The plastic caps do not provide the necessary sterilized seal in resealing the IV container if there is not a tight mechanical closure over the container top. As a result of the tight fit required between the plastic cap and a metal seal of a bottle, the nursing staff often faces a problem in attempting to separate the plastic cap from the metal rim. The nursing staff often must resort to using expensive surgical instruments or scissors, which can be damaged, to help them in prying off the plastic sealing cap. The difficulty of removing the plastic caps from IV containers has resulted in some hospitals issuing pliers to the nursing staff to remove the caps. Removal of plastic caps or resealing intravenous containers has resulted in the inefficient use of the services of skilled personnel, such as registered nurses, in attempting to remove container closures. More importantly, many of the prior art closures and methods for sealing IV solution bottles do not allow a nurse inspecting a container without a sealing cover to know where it was removed, or if it was previously resealed. In such a situation, rather than risk exposing the patient to a serious infection from harmful bacteria which may have accumulated on the top of such a container, the nurse must often reject the container which results in wasting the medication as well as a delay in administering the medication to a patient while additional medication is reordered from the Pharmacy department.
The present hospital practice does not normally include removing the plastic cap of heat shrink plastic wrap applied to the inlet port of an IV bag. Unlike the IV bottle, a separate outlet port is provided for connecting the container intravenously to the patient. However, the inability to reenter the inlet port with prior resealing techniques results in the loss of the entire container and its contents on those occasions when it is either desirable to change the dosage of the medication or the unit is not used and is returned to the Pharmacy department. As the medication in the container may be quite expensive, this represents a substantial loss to the hospitals.
On May 12, 1981, U.S. Pat. No. 4,266,687 issued to the inventor of the present invention for a sealing cover and method for resealing an intravenous container. The invention covered by that patent was an improvement over the prior practice of resealing IV bottles with molded plastic caps. The present invention offers even further improvements, including the improvement in applying a more flexible cover to such a container, an orientated plastic film to promote separation of the cover upon removal to leave a telltale mark on the rim of the container, and a top layer of a flexible plastic material having "t-shaped" slits to promote separation of the cover to form the telltale strips of plastic material. The flexible plastic cover may be made of a clear plastic material to give a cleaner and a more professional appearance when in place on a container. The flexibility of the cover enables one size cover to accommodate manufacturer's variations from the standard sized container top. In addition, the cover of the present invention represents an improvement in resealing plastic IV bags.